The Jiu Jiu Journal

Thoughts & reflections by the proud uncle of a special young lady adopted from China.

Welcome!

My niece joined the family on July 12th, 2010. This special young lady's mother is my younger sister, which in classic Chinese culture makes me her Jiu Jiu (舅舅) -- thus the title of this blog. Here I intend to semi-regularly post reflections, thoughts, stories, and assorted whathaveyous pertaining to our trip to China, adoption in general, and (mostly) watching my niece grow up. Since the web is a very public place, I will attempt to maintain my family's privacy while telling the story... but I invite you to follow the blog and come along for the adventure!

Sunday, March 18, 2018

Still kinda buried under lots of stuff so not a "real" post... just something cute to share from Saturday evening.

AJ & Miri took Mom & Dad to the local Dollar Tree for some Easter stuff (Dude, doesn't every Jewish family need Easter stuff?) and I had some errands of my own to run, so I called to let Mom know her firstborn had returned home safely.

Except the person who picked up the phone wasn't Mom... it was my niece. (I did eventually get to exchange a few words with my mother later in the evening.)

First we discussed how I knew she was at Grandma & Grandpa's instead of home at her house. Then she had to tell me aaaaallll about how they had dinner, but it wasn't really dinner because it was kind of like lunch, but it was too late to be lunch so it had to be dinner, but it wasn't really dinner because all she had was two waffles and a scrambled egg with cheese on it so she and Mommy would eat dinner when they got home, but it really kind of was like dinner anyway. (I'm still not sure she actually took in a single breath during the entire five-minute soliloquy.)

Then she told me that the Lorax wanted to talk to me and spent the next few minutes speaking in a gruff voice, telling me all about how this wasn't Miri, it was the Lorax, and he was going to save all the trees because trees are important. When I finally got the usual giggly voice back I asked what the Lorax's name was and without missing a beat she replied, "Bob."

I asked how long she had known Bob the Lorax and her reply was that now Hoppy the Rabbit was there too, and wanted to talk to me... So the next couple of minutes she spoke in a high, squeaky voice that included a lot of words like "hoppy" and "hippity" describing what the day had been like. I asked if Hoppy went "boing" a lot while hopping and Miri reassured me that she did.

Just as I thought I had Hoppy the Rabbit figured out, Miri said that there was a dolphin waiting to talk to me, too... and proceeded to make all kinds of odd sounds that I had to admit did actually sound like a dolphin (assuming it had been swimming in water saturated with quaaludes). I asked how a dolphin had managed to get into Grandma's kitchen without any water, and after a moment's hesitation the response was, "Okay, I'm going to put your sister on the phone now." (This was followed by some rather surprised-sounding background noises, followed by Miri saying, "She's not ready yet... Oh, okay, here's your sister.")

What's really funny is that this was pretty much a normal phone conversation with the Pipsqueak. :-)